Following on from talk about what-comics-we-read-as-children, and since no-one appeared to have heard of Ranger, I did a bit of hunting and found some stuff here. And this is the very issue that contained the plans enabling you to Make Your Own Flying Concorde, which was the first model aeroplane I ever made out of paper.
Which led on to greater ('greater'?) things, such as
a fiendishly complicated model of a Victor bomber which I built based on pictures in my Big Book Of Aeroplanes....which in turn resulted in my first altered state of consciousness, owing to an intense session with the Stanley knife, an acre or so of cartridge paper and a tube of UHU glue.
Very odd sensation. Not sure that I'd recommend it.
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Crikey, it's getting a bit BOP around here. Here's a picture as a bit of light relief.
Damn, it's got an aeroplane in it.
You mean you never made ordinary paper planes?
ReplyDeleteNo I'm sure you must have made those... but unlike me you didn't consider those to be models... because of course they weren't... they were more like origami I suppose. No glue.
I made loads of paper aeroplanes, Caroline; the first design came from a Rupert annual, c. 1962, and it looked good and had some nice folds, but flew like a rock.
ReplyDeleteI like the origami element of paper darts.
You just reminded me of my favourite book on the subject, by Capt. Ralph S. Barnaby, USN (retd.); his Barnaby Flyer flies beautifully.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/paper/airplanes.html
Oh wow I'll have to make some of those now...
ReplyDeleteAlways dreamt of flying on the Concorde just once...I never thought they'd retire it!
ReplyDeletealan
Love the joke.
ReplyDeleteI might have had the same Rupert Annual.
Dom used to have a comic called 'Astrophi' when she was young. She created a model of the French football stadium for the world cup and other amazing things. The most interesting was a mini theater in which she could perform the mysteries of the after life of the pharoahs. Very educational.
I can't think of another aeroplane more complicated than the Victor - did you ever see the Valiants parked at St Athan? For some years I worked on Vulcans at RAF Scampton and, for a short time, was even on 617 Sqdn. However, apart from Airfix kits, I would never have attempted constructing models from paper - your many talents always amaze me.
ReplyDeleteI never particularly fancied flying in Concorde, Alan; but it has been in my life for quite a while, in an incidental way. I was encamped on the side of the runway at Brize Norton with the Air Cadets, the summer that Concorde did bumps and circuits there. We used to hear it distantly THUMP from the top of the hill where we lived in Wales, at about eleven o' clock in the morning, as it headed off for New York; it was funny pausing in the haymaking to hear it, us continuing a centuries-old thing being touched by something so modern; and once when I was relaxing on the back deck in the Western Approaches one afternoon, enjoying my cup of tea, when there was a terrific BANG - jumped out of my boots - high above was the French Concorde streaking along at a terrific rate... and now there's one sitting on the runway at Filton a few miles away, as a museum piece. Sic transit indeed.
ReplyDeleteI just couldn't imagine that happening in an English comic, Anji - dramatising the Egyptian afterlife... when I was very very small, I thought that different languages were just the same words as english but in code, so if you knew which letters meant which letters then you could speak any language. (We are talking vvvv young here you know). Having got over that I remember browsing around Cultura in St Malo and concluding that French reading habits, too, are more different to English ones than I had suspected. And so on.
It was all the curves that attracted me, Neil; I think the Victor is a beautiful aeroplane. Must look up how it got designed, now I think of it; there's the story of Issigonis sketching the design of the Minor (or was it the Mini?) on a napkin, but the Victor doesn't seem to have the back-story it deserves.
I don't recall the Valiants at St Athan; I'm pretty sure they weren't there in the late 70s when I was gliding there. When was that? -and more coincidences; I was given a guided tour of a 617 Vulcan at Scampton. The idea of flying in one of those at low level into Russia seemed terrifying. Still, I suppose that was what the Cold War was all about, I guess
Bloody blogger ate my last reply!
ReplyDeleteWarships was my thing. Bismarck, Schanhorst etc :-) Get the paint line on the hull absolutely straight using sellotape!
Airfix were the kings...there were of course those who favoured Revel (a bit like preferring Magpie to Blue Peter...oh dear. And they talked about 'decals', not 'transfers'!!)
And then, of course, Tamiya (?)...boxes covered in glossy Korean letters, featuring things like the 'Panzerkampfwagen Mk IV Ser.3. Afrika Korps 1941-3', or some such. Usually with a picture some bloke standing next to the tank with a stick grenade or something...But they were expensive.
I did relent one year when I was given a Revel 1/32 scale P51-D Mustang. Huge. Wonderful. Made the 1/32 Spitfire too. That was fab.
Almost as wonderful as the 4 foot high Saturn V rocket I made later...now that was brilliant (even a little LEM nestled inside the third stage)
:-)